The administration and its supporters made some serious errors. Yet they didn’t commit the only or the most epic failures here. News media are also making sowing public confusion. Major outlets repeatedly misreported stories of coverage cancellations within the individual and small-group marketplace. A series of stories described the predicament of specific people whose insurance was apparently cancelled, and who now apparently face massive premium increases because of health care reform. Anecdata always has the potential to mislead. Consumers with individual or small-group policies that have been cancelled are a tiny proportion of the insured, and are also a small proportion of those most affected by health reform. Many of the cancelled plans were incredibly limited, and would not have protected people from financial ruin in the event of serious injury or illness. Many people whose coverage was cancelled are eligible for subsidies on the new health insurance exchanges or are now eligible for Medicaid. Some are young adults who can enroll on a parent’s group plan.

A striking proportion of supposed ACA horror stories fall apart entirely when subjected to scrutiny. A particularly egregious example: On October 11, Sean Hannity featured featured six ostensible victims of Obamacare. Each of the six stories proved fell apart upon straightforward fact-checking conducted by Salon’s Eric Stern. To my knowledge, Hannity has run no correction.